"...a dash of Victoriana and a smidge of Gothic horror."

"Picture the Dead" is one of those books you see in a bookstore, pick up and thumb through, and then clutch to your chest as you move towards the cash wrap, as though someone might steal it from you. I had this book in an advance reader's edition, but I know that the hardcover edition will be beautiful and well worth a purchase.

Adele Griffin (two-time finalist for the National Book Award) has written a wonderful story about a family of old money living in a dank, dark and empty home in Boston during the American Civil war. Jennie lives there at the mercy of her Uncle Pritchett and his wife. She is lonely- her twin brother Toby passed way in the war and she finds out very early in the book that her fiancee, her cousin Will, also died. The only Pritchett soldier to return home is Will's brother, Quinn. But Quinn was never warm, and now he is chased by ghosts and is full of secrets- some of them Will's.